Why giant malls which choke local businesses and encourage people to drive long distances to a single shopping destination are bad:
From a Transit New Zealand press release:
Transit New Zealand advises motorists travelling on the Southern Motorway to the new Sylvia Park shopping centre that due to heavy congestion all traffic is being diverted away from the site.
Entry to the car park is now closed and the northbound off-ramp to Mt Wellington has also been shut to restore traffic flows.
Motorists are requested to plan their visit to Sylvia Park for another day.
Bookmark to:
June 8th, 2006 at 1:23 pm
If people actually paid for their road use (i.e. privatise the roads, stop subsidising them with taxpayers money, and allow the owners to toll them) this wouldn’t be an issue. Do likewise for trains, buses, and planes.
Then, if the congestion was too great, or the mall shops & prices not too tempting relative to the local faire, then people would stay local.
If the congestion wasn’t too bad, but the road tolls were to high (which would impact car & bus travel), then people might take rail.
If not, they’d travel by car.
This only becomes complicated when people (read: Government busybodies) try to impose their own preferences on consumers.
June 8th, 2006 at 2:39 pm
I seem to recall that the trains and planes were privatised a few years ago.
And what happenned? The private owners asset stripped the transport companies, neglected vital investment and maintenance, and Government had to buy back both the rail tracks and Air New Zealand to prevent total collapse of our rail and air transport networks.
June 8th, 2006 at 3:39 pm
thats because they only privatised the trains and planes Ivan.
if they privatised the roads as well as Duncan is suggesting, then the trains would be more attractive than they are.
not that im for privatising roads…
June 8th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
It doesn’t even work that well that way… the toll roads in the US were either brand new, expensive as hell, unused and going bankrupt, or have wound up back in the public domain, or with subsidies and regulation. I have no urge to privatize roads, or trains, or airports. There are items of infrastructure that for practical reasons of time and space simply cannot be duplicated and for which competition is impossible to organize.
That’s not to say that the market doesn’t work, it just doesn’t work everywhere for everything all the time.
I know that traffic and roads are a pet peeve of a fair number of us, and that we want people to USE public transport, and therefore we want to spend enough money on it to actually make it really useful for a society that measures time in picoseconds and New York seconds (which are shorter). We don’t have that much money.
What will happen though, is that the society will slow down a bit, as transport immediacy becomes more expensive. Meetings will start after the bus arrives at the corner and the workers debark… inventories will have to increase a bit because “just in time” costs transport dollars and transport energy. Rebalancing… and most of that is going to be through market forces. The convenience of the automobile may be somewhat mitigated by the difficulty of actually keeping a pellet fired steam car running…
Well… that’s one vision anyway. The problem is that we’ll STILL have roads and we’ll still NEED roads. Probably none within 5 meters of the current sea level but that’s another consideration.
As for the “giant malls”, the concentration of shopping and shipping and trade gives some efficiencies as well as taking some away. One trip and you can get everything on your list vs several trips to different stores in different places. I know that not everyone likes them and they often have teething troubles, but I don’t think that we should let our biases keep us from considering those places where the population density is such that they CAN work.
respectfully
BJ
June 8th, 2006 at 4:56 pm
“As for the “giant mallsâ€?, the concentration of shopping and shipping and trade gives some efficiencies as well as taking some away. One trip and you can get everything on your list vs several trips to different stores in different places. ”
Hmmm… I’m not convinced. Mostly the concentration of shopping seems to result in being able to buy the same products from a whole bunch of different shops in the same place, or a choice of several brands of the same thing, without much apparent difference. What seems to happen is that these retail spaces are only profitable if they are selling a small range of the most popular goods. If you want variety you have to go elsewhere, where the rents are cheaper.
I used to sell boots in a shop just off Oxford Street in London - one of the world’s premier shopping streets - we had a lousy range of stuff and sizes as the company considered it pointless to cater to anything but the greatest mass. I used to get quite a few stressed out people whose feet were bigger than the norm, desperatly searching London for anything that would fit. Capitalism is good at providing choice, providing your choice is the same as everybody else’s.
June 8th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
great to see consumerism and capitalism is alive and well. Good to see people using their cars because no other transport method is so convenient.
Sad that many of the people would be the parasites on benefits should be working instead of bludging on the poor hard working taxpayer. Government / taxpayer funded benefits must be too high -
Poverty - my butt - they don’t know th emeaning of the word.
June 8th, 2006 at 9:02 pm
“the toll roads in the US were either brand new, expensive as hell, unused and going bankrupt, or have wound up back in the public domain, or with subsidies and regulation” Such utter nonsense - there are plenty of financially viable toll roads in the US, public and private. Some are political boondoggles that should never have been built, but one of the main limitations is that they compete with subsidised parallel roads in many cases.
Duncan is right - had Transit been privately owned, or even running commercially, it would have priced the congested offramp in realtime - like the SR91 toll lanes in Orange County, and made people pay. Then they would choose whether to go there, go somewhere else, not travel or catch public transport.
Road funding and management is one of the few pieces of infrastructure still run by Soviet central planning principles. It is “free” at point of use (people don’t consider fuel consumption when making these decisions). The result is the sort of mad congestion sometimes, and empty roads at other times. If you priced the roads and ran them commercially, the amount of road construction needed would shrink enormously. You’re so focused on the supply side of the alternative - public transport - not the demand side of roads. Fix that and public transport will suddenly be far more competitive.
June 8th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Shopping as a leisure activity is the most disturbing trend to emerge from the late 20th century. It seems women in particular are drawn to the shiny malls, and don’t mind racking up enormous debt to do so; while men get sucked into the ‘Pay no money down for this expensive 50″ plazma that will only last 5 years!’ thing.
Some of the facts really suck-
* ‘Designer’ brands made in Asia by exploited workers paid just cents an hour, then sold for high prices to gullible shoppers
* Low quality goods that are used briefly if at all before being thrown out
* A fermented culture of materialism and greed where more is always better, you can never have too much, you are never rich enough
* People’s emotions relentlessly worked on by ubiquitous, insidious advertising
* All of this paid for by massive amounts of ‘easy credit’, creating life-long debt-slaves for the CC companies.
* Various other concerns about pollution, congestion, crime, low paid staff.
One day the shopping culture will end and society will be the better for it, IMHO. NZ needs to foster a culture of saving/investing rather than spending.
June 8th, 2006 at 11:10 pm
This is a classic example of businesses not having to consider negative externalities of their activities. I cant see local businesses getting anywhere with the mall owners should they request recognition of business interuption.
I’ve tried to flesh this out a little at http://shoppingfix.blogspot.com/
I must confess I dont know whether the answer lies in corporate social responsibility or in some form of consumer immunisation program. Probably somewhere in between…
If this is life for “mainstream nz” we’re up to our elbows in the proverbial.
June 9th, 2006 at 1:36 am
By the way does the Green party give a damn about Tim Selwyn’s conviction for sedition? Why is it silent? Is Keith Locke asleep? Or have you the same respect for freedom of speech as Labour and National apparently have? It’s an absolute disgrace.
June 9th, 2006 at 9:41 am
had Transit been privately owned, or even running commercially, it would have priced the congested offramp in realtime - like the SR91 toll lanes in Orange County, and made people pay. Then they would choose whether to go there, go somewhere else, not travel or catch public transport.
Yeah Right. So your typical scenario is this:
“joe public who has made the decision to ‘get-to-the-mall’ in his car based on real time info, now finds 30 minutes later that it will cost $10 to use the Mt Wellington off ramp”
Does Joe:
a. Instantaneously change to non existant PT
b. Take the exit anyway because the plazma TV won’t fit on the non existant bus, and Joe’s saving far more than the $10 ramp charge
c. Change his mind and ignore the journey’s ’sunk’ costs incurred thus far (and also that this is the only half day he got off).
d. Park on the hard shoulder until the congestion has eased and he can avoid the $10 charge - too bad about the motorway fine
e. etc
Welcome to the real world - where ‘rational’ actors make ‘irrational” (to economists anyway) decisions.
June 9th, 2006 at 11:09 am
uk_kiwi,
Your post reeks of contempt for the common man, whilst at the same time being extremely flattering to yourself of course: From your lofty perch above the herd, only you see how the greedy, bovine masses are being manipulated. Look, they even make a T-shirt for people like you:-
http://www.myteespot.com/product.php?productid=5984
mikeymike,
> “I must confess I dont know whether the answer lies in corporate social responsibility or in some form of consumer immunisation program. Probably somewhere in between…”
It all sounds very North Korean. You can count me out of your re-education program thank you.
> “If this is life for “mainstream nzâ€? we’re up to our elbows in the proverbial.”
Say again?
Maybe half the world’s population lives on less than two dollars a day and you reckon that a traffic jam is damning evidence of life in NZ. It’s evidence of wealth and success is what it is. Half the world should be so lucky to have this “problem.”
The green movement and this blog are the hang-outs for the world’s spoilt rich kids who will never experience a real problem in their lives and who have absolutely no idea of the reality that faces billions of people day after grinding day.
June 9th, 2006 at 12:48 pm
libertyscott: see Selwyn case shows need for review of sedition laws
Cheers
June 9th, 2006 at 1:27 pm
oh stop trolling mould-boy. Before you start accusing others, consider … pot … kettle … black.
June 9th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Mould
You know it’s impossible for the “grinding poor” to consume at the level consumers in the West do. So why pretend otherwise, or label those who advocate just solutions as unrealistic ?
June 9th, 2006 at 1:48 pm
mr/s mouldwrap
sometimes the tongue gets caught in the cheek. regardless, ever heard of the concept of marketing? ever heard/read/been subjected to a snippet of chomsky? nth korea should be so lucky!
having spent some time in the “development industry” i’m aware of your “$2 a day” perspective, and also some of your vaunted “real problems”. what you speak of is relative poverty - which does exist in nz, mt wellington, and even in that traffic jam.
if “wealth and success” are measured by traffic jams we are indeed toast. taking your logic its next step, are you to say that you and i are un-successful because we’re not in a traffic jam. in my argument a little absurd? or is your perspective so?
sustainability sure is a “luxury” of the middle class. but hell, someones gotta give it a crack or we’ll wind up chasing growth on NO resources. wouldn’t that be fun! as for never experiencing real problems… crikey… my favourite silver spoon went missing yesterday. i think it was the butler.
June 9th, 2006 at 2:29 pm
There’s something to be said for privatising roads, though. I kind of like the idea of taking my share of the road and digging it up for a veggie garden. Then we’ll see the libertarian defence of property rights be put to good use.
Secondly, a fair chunk of the roading network in this country is serving back block farms that wouldn’t be profitable if they had to pay for their access themselves. Putting them out of business and letting the land revert to bush sounds good to me. Making people pay road tolls would put a lot of tourists off too. It won’t do much for our balance of payments situation, but then NZ would probably fail on the open market and should probably be closed down anyway.
June 9th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
I agree with everybody here, because it’s agreement Friday! Yay, harmonious accords R us, at a shopping centre near you.
Anyway, I’d have thought it obvious that anyone who likes hanging out in malls deserves all the traffic jams we can provide them with.
In fact, I’d have thought people who like hanging out in malls would also enjoy hanging out in traffic jams as a matter of course. They’re pretty much identical as far as I can see.
Although having said that I did find St Luke’s useful one time when I needed a plastic lemon for my Some Like It Hot party costume at short notice. But I hasten to add I didn’t like being there. Everybody looks the same in malls, and in traffic jams.
I successfully avoid both by shopping online, using local suppliers and shops and by commuting on public transport.
June 9th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
Bjchip - As for the “giant malls”, the concentration of shopping and shipping and trade gives some efficiencies as well as taking some away. One trip and you can get everything on your list vs several trips to different stores in different places.
There’s another system that enables the same thing: it’s called a “city”. Not only only are there a lot of different shops concentrated together, but a lot of workplaces and homes too, so not only can you get everything in one trip, you can do it at lunchtime; or walk or take public transport home. And they usually have a much more interesting variety of shops, too!
June 9th, 2006 at 4:22 pm
Single shopping areas are convenient. Get over it, and get out of our lives. What does Russel Norman the communist think we should do?
June 9th, 2006 at 5:25 pm
This was my response a while back to Bernard Darnton (Libertarianz leader) calling for road privatisation and dumping the RMA:
” I note he’s keen to privatise the roads – property paid for by our tax dollars and supposedly owned by all of us. I guess, being a man of principle, Mr Darnton isn’t planning to follow previous privatisers in first stealing our common property, then flogging it to private interests.
“Presumably, he also objects to compulsory sales of people’s property by the state, or the forced replacement of ownership with company shares, as has been practised in the past.
“I assume, then, he will divide up the roads and give us each individual title to a chunk of them, and leave us to negotiate with companies wanting to buy up the pieces. Personally, I don’t want to sell my piece, I shall fence it off and put a “No Trespassing” sign on the gate. That way I won’t be bothered by pesky road developers trying to talk me round.
“Should anybody try and build a road anywhere near my property, I shall sue. If any road noise, construction noise, exhaust gases or other interference with my right to enjoy my private property occur, I shall see the culprits in court. As there won’t be any Resource Management Act or other planning legislation to decide what is reasonable, the courts will have to decide everything on an ad hoc basis. And Mr Darnton will see that my property rights are held paramount.
“Inevitably, the judiciary and its bureaucracy will grow huge trying to keep up with the workload as individual lawsuits replace regulation. But as Mr Darnton will have closed down most of the tax system, this remnant of the state will collapse.”
I also not that a subsidised road system is about the only thing that makes back block farms economic. Privatise the roads and a lot will collapse and eventually revert to bush. The number of tourists would fall as well. That means fewer jobs and more people emigrating to Australia. Not good news for our balance of payments situation, but good news for the environment, bring it on!
June 9th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
That congestion will most likely pass. It was opening day, an event. The exact same thing happened at BlueWater in Kent when it opened.
We do need better roads. Toll roads are a great idea - I used to use them in the UK. Even given the high cost of fuel, the tolls, and the congestion, it was still a lot more economic to drive than use the trains. And I like trains - well, I like the trains in Europe. The key was having both road and rail well organised.
Wondered what you guys think about ethanol? Here’s a great economic model presented to Google by venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, a Silicon Valley billionaire, who wants to save the world from oil: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-570288889128950913
June 9th, 2006 at 6:16 pm
Frog - thank you, my faith is restored!
June 9th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
“I used to get quite a few stressed out people whose feet were bigger than the norm, desperatly searching London for anything that would fit. Capitalism is good at providing choice, providing your choice is the same as everybody else’s.”
The obvious question springs to mind - so why didn’t you start up a shop catering to this demand?
June 9th, 2006 at 7:40 pm
It’s not a freakin’ quastion of roads! The responsibility for the interruption of traffic lies squarely with the mall. They are entirely responsible for the entirely predictable (and I expect entirely predicted) consequences of their advertising.
The fact we can’t send them a bill for the lost productivity to the city as a whole (eg delayed freight etc) says a lot about how well the law can cope with irresponsible corporate (as opposed to individual human) behaviour.
In the process of an assumed predicted advertising gimmic (you mean they didn’t have a risk analysis on the project which failed to predict this? - rubbish!). They willingly chose to derive a great deal of free advertising out of disrupting the city.
With great power comes greater responsibility. Or should do. It’s idiocy to suggest you should be permitted to build the biggest mall in the country, and refuse to manage the consequences of it.
June 9th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
“I also not that a subsidised road system is about the only thing that makes back block farms economic.” Sam, you’re quite right. The recent MoT study on Surface Transport Costs and Charges indicated that the only roads that did not generate a surplus of revenue over financial costs were rural roads. Either you introduce road pricing and charge to cover that cost (and find some roads simply fall into disrepair, as does the land) or you charge the property owners the remaining cost in rates. Either way, there are rural roads that should close - and the farms should too. Abolishing the Kiwishare will help that along, because it subsidises farm telecommunications. The counter is that driving peak times on congested Auckland roads will be hienously expensive (like Singapore does), encouraging public transport use, living closer to work AND regional development.
June 9th, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Mouldywrap trolled:
“The green movement and this blog are the hang-outs for the world’s spoilt rich kids who will never experience a real problem in their lives and who have absolutely no idea of the reality that faces billions of people day after grinding day. ”
Bollocks. Look at the grass-roots Jubilee 2000 movement, who eventually convinced world leaders to write off unpayable crippling debts of the worlds poorest countries- ’spolit rich kids’ made it happen. This is the same reason that student activism and demonstrations are so feared by despots- these are ’spoilt rich kids’ who frequently change the world.
The people of developed countries need to challenge their leaders to find solutions for the problems of the third world, not just exploit them for cheap labour and resources. This has nothing to do with contempt for the common man (?) and everything to do with responsibility for one’s actions.
So no, I won’t drive along in my consumerist bubble, profiting on the slave labour of other countries. I want to be an informed consumer at the very least, and I would encourage others to do so. As for materialism, studies show that people in richer countries get less and less happy as they get wealthier- you cannot buy your way to happiness.
June 10th, 2006 at 4:31 am
Liberty - Do you know what happened to SR 91 in SoCal? They are now wholly owned by the Orange County Transit Authority. As I said, back in the public domain. Privately owned they were only profitable on the basis of a non-compete clause that prevented further development in the corridor. Which was my point. Now they pay for themselves somewhat through the tolls but are, as all such infrastructure must be, controlled by the state. It WAS tried, but it didn’t end well.
The New York State Thruway is a toll road, controlled by the State. The New Jersey Turnpike is … controlled by the state. I don’t recall a SINGLE bridge or road I paid a toll on actually being owned privately in all the years I lived and worked there.
As for the city vs the “mall” I have to say that being from New York I am somewhat familiar with the concept. I haven’t however, noticed any perceptible marginal difference. It takes a considerable sized city to support enough shops, and the infrastructure demands are different for a full on city because people actually live there. Some of what has been said about “consumerism” here is pretty spot-on, but this is not a reason to reject the “mall” out of hand. Personally I “LIKE’ cities better, but a good mall out in the burbs is usually more convenient than the trip to the city is. I often rode my bicycle to Roosevelt Field on Long Island. How many places can you ride your bike to in a day folks. Outside the mall I’d have had to go to 4 stores in 3 different towns to find the same stuff. That’s a lot of huff-n-puff.
Not perfect, either of them… but the negatives cited are not creations of the mall, but of the consumer culture.
respectfully
BJ
June 10th, 2006 at 4:33 am
oops.. And poor public transit
respectfully
BJ
June 10th, 2006 at 11:16 am
Gareth Morgan has an interesting comment on his bike trip through Mexico
The underdeveloped world really is a wake-up call. It provides many reminders - not just on what we’ve gained but also what we’ve lost in pursuit of the Anglo-American spending-led, risk-free nirvana that dictates our daily life. Hollywood and Brands have much to answer for.
http://worldbybike.com/northamerica/trip_tales.asp?id=1100
Henry
June 10th, 2006 at 1:02 pm
>>The fact we can’t send them a bill for the lost productivity to the city as a whole (eg delayed freight etc) says a lot about how well the law can cope with irresponsible corporate (as opposed to individual human) behaviour.
Protest marches on parliament block traffic in Wellington, and no one calls that irresponsible behaviour, which it isn’t.
I doubt that Mall would have much to gain by failing to get punters through the door. They were guaranteed publicity regardless. If it was a stunt, then it was self-deafeating. If it can be established that they purposefully created the problem, then yes, I think they should be sent the bill.
Does the same go for protest organisers who, say, purposefully block the streets to traffic in order to draw attention to, say, car usage?
June 10th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
“so why didn’t you start up a shop catering to this demand?”
Personally I didn’t have anything like the capital needed. But more importantly, my point was that under market conditions, rents in central areas become prohibitive for any business that doesn’t cater to the greatest mass. Thus, centralised retail areas don’t provide choice.
June 11th, 2006 at 12:17 am
Peter - “Protest marches on parliament block traffic in Wellington, and no one calls that irresponsible behaviour, which it isn’t.”
The clear difference is that protest marchers, individually or collectively, do not stand to make direct financial gain through their actions. The mall does:
a) the droves of lemmings blocking the motorway were heading to the mall to spend money as a direct result of it’s advertising
b) it’s fantastic publicity for those that never made it, generating the sense they missed out
Far from failing in their objectives, they achieved them perfectly.
Let’s be clear. the mall is in the business of demand creation. They have at their disposal the results of millions of dollars of scientific research into consumer motivation and behavior. There is no question of lack of intent, or of ignorance. They got the results they expected at the expense of the community.
So long as advertisers and the advertising industry are free to externalise the absolutely forseeable results of their behaviour in a way no other scientifically-based industry is, they will continue to create perverse consequences for the overall community.
June 11th, 2006 at 1:41 am
Liberty Scott said “Frog - thank you, my faith is restored!”
Should we have deported a man just because he associated with someone judged to be a lousy pilot by his flight instuctors, yet who by most experts accounts supposidly managed to pull of a nearly impossibly flight manouver into the us pentagon, which many eye witnesses said looked like a missile and Donald R. is on record, freudian slipping it when he called it a missile, all because he associated with someone who wasn’t making the grade in flight school training and who hung out in strip clubs?
Surely this is an issue for the “libertarians” to tear into?
http://edition.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/06/10/newzealand.terror/
June 11th, 2006 at 3:38 pm
>>rents in central areas become prohibitive for any business that doesn’t cater to the greatest mass
If that were true, every store would be the Warehouse. High margin niche businesses can be more profitable than those who “cater to the greatest mass”.
I’m not a big fan of malls myself, but they have their place.
June 11th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
>>do not stand to make direct financial gain through their actions
No, but the result is the same. The guy stuck in his truck who can’t make a delivery doesn’t care if he’s blocked by mall trash or hippies, he’s still out of pocket.
In both instances, I think the local authorities have a responsibility to ensure that traffic is managed properly. If the mall is found to be negligent in this respect, then they deserve to have their operations limited.
I agree in principle with what you’re saying, I’m just not convinced it’s a big deal, especially as it is a one off.
June 12th, 2006 at 10:43 am
BJchip said: As for the city vs the “mall” I have to say that being from New York I am somewhat familiar with the concept.
Sorry if I came across as a bit sarcastic
It seems that a lot of Aucklanders are unfamiliar with the concept, though.
> I haven’t however, noticed any perceptible marginal difference. It takes a considerable sized city to support enough shops, and the infrastructure demands are different for a full on city because people actually live there.
I’m not sure what you mean by “perceptible marginal difference”. And why would a city shopping centre need more population to support it than a mall with the same retail capacity?
> Personally I “LIKE’ cities better, but a good mall out in the burbs is usually more convenient than the trip to the city is. I often rode my bicycle to Roosevelt Field on Long Island. How many places can you ride your bike to in a day folks. Outside the mall I’d have had to go to 4 stores in 3 different towns to find the same stuff. That’s a lot of huff-n-puff.
Perhaps we’re talking about different things here: you’re talking about malls vs dispersed local shops; I’m talking about malls vs CBDs. Though if densities are high enough, even towns and residential areas should be able to support enough small local shops to supply everyday needs.
My main objections to malls are:
- Poor land use. Instead of the exurban model (a mall of 1-2 storeys, an office park of 4 storeys and a dormitory suburb of 1-2 storeys, each surrounded by carparks and motorways), a city mixes it all together and saves a lot of green land from development. The Fountain Gate (or Lakes?) mall in Melbourne covers a similar land area to Melbourne’s entire CBD!
- Homogeneity. Malls tend to get stuck with the same national and global brands, and every one looks the same. Even when a main shopping street in a city starts to go the same way (e.g. Lambton Quay), there are still independent shops opening on the side streets, buoyed by the high population of shoppers, workers and residents.
- Private vs public space. Public spaces in cities (e.g. Midland Park or Cuba “Mall” - not a mall, ironically, but a pedestrian street) may be full of shoppers taking a rest, but they’re also used for protests, buskers, street vendors, performance art, graffiti, games and a whole host of human activities beyond shopping. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt you’d get far trying any of those in Sylvia Park.
June 12th, 2006 at 1:45 pm
It IS the non-shopping related activities that make the CBD more desireable than a mall, but I never needed a mall when I lived close enough to the CBD. When I did NOT live close enough to a decent sized CBD, the mall provided one-stop shopping. Not all malls are enclosed, not all of them prohibit busking. None of them in my recollection, were appropriate places for protest and none permitted that sort of organized disruptive behaviour.
Overall, as I said, I prefer cities, but the land use differences aren’t so pronounced if you actually bring public transit near or onto the mall. I’ve always regarded Malls as suburban phenomena, and not real useful in other venues. Yeah, there’s a mall in central LA, but there it is a security issue. Lock the shops AND the mall entrances and share the guard costs. In a well policed city, this is less of an advantage. In LA it can be the difference between having a shop from one day to the next.
I have not seen the FG mall in Melbourne. Having such a thing when you have a city like Melbourne with a fair CBD does seem a bit wasteful to me.
respectfully
BJ
June 12th, 2006 at 3:22 pm
uk_kiwi,
>”Look at the grass-roots Jubilee 2000 movement, who eventually convinced world leaders to write off unpayable crippling debts of the worlds poorest countries”
Being generous with other people’s money is a vice, not a virtue. Why didn’t they give their own money and solicit donations to *pay off* the debt?
The real problem is that unrepresentative (and often repressive) regimes borrow the money, yet the nation as a whole is deemed to have assumed the liability. Personally, after such a regime has been ousted, I’d like to see creditors have to pursue the dictators that they lent their money to, and have no claim on the country itself.
> “This is the same reason that student activism and demonstrations are so feared by despots- these are ’spoilt rich kids’ who frequently change the world.”
oh, bless.
> “So no, I won’t drive along in my consumerist bubble, profiting on the slave labour of other countries. I want to be an informed consumer at the very least”
An informed consumer would understand that we are talking about free workers, not slaves: So I’d say you have a fair way to go yet.
PEL,
>”Capitalism is good at providing choice, providing your choice is the same as everybody else’s.”
Would that be the same lack of choice that tempts uk_kiwi into a “consumerist bubble”?
Get with the program. The latest criticism of capitalism is that it provides *too much* choice. Loony books like The Paradox of Choice have been written to lament the bewildering array of options that capitalism delivers.
Huskeynut,
> “The fact we can’t send them a bill for the lost productivity to the city as a whole (eg delayed freight etc) says a lot about how well the law can cope with irresponsible corporate (as opposed to individual human) behaviour.”
The mall will doubtless be stung for taxes over the coming years which will pay for its road impact many times over. It will be a huge net contributor to local council coffers. So where it the gap in the law you think you have identified which lets corporate bodies like the mall behave “irresponsibly”?
As for other local businesses, well, the thing about congestion is that it is not a true externality, because its effects are felt precisely amongst those competing for road-space. It’s not question of congesters and congestees; they’re all congesters.
June 12th, 2006 at 4:02 pm
Tomsk noted: “Private vs public space. Public spaces in cities …’re also used for protests, buskers, street vendors, performance art, graffiti, games and a whole host of human activities beyond shopping. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I doubt you’d get far trying any of those in Sylvia Park.”
As Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) notes in “An Army of Davids”, that’s a feature, not a bug, to many people.
June 12th, 2006 at 4:12 pm
Latest news on the debacle:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&ObjectID=10386165
seems that it happened all weekend as well, so it seems as though the congestion is not some cynical one-off ploy to advertise the mall, rather it is a systemic problem, due to a lack of planning.
It seems as though the community can recover the costs though -
“Transit acting regional manager Peter Spies said there were provisions in the building consent in case traffic became a problem, and the developers would be expected to rectify it.”
cool, so the mall will be forced to pay for a new motorway - maybe they will decide that paying for free shoppers buses or building a train station will be cheaper.
June 12th, 2006 at 4:28 pm
James L
cheers, that was a much needed laugh
June 12th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
MouldWarp
>�Capitalism is good at providing choice, providing your choice is the same as >>everybody else’s.�
I didn’t say that. I was quoting an earlier post.
I agree with you, as you’ll see if you read my posts
June 12th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
Imagine if the money spent both on developing that new Mall, and now on improving the roads to get there, had been spent on the revamp of the Greater Auckland public transport system … (so badly needed).
In greater Christchurch/Otautahi our excellent (and improving) integrated public transport system makes the CBD a vibrant place to visit and to shop … and it continues to improve noticeably.
Alternatively one can use the same public transport system to visit various already existing malls in the greater Christchurch/Otautahi area. There are still lots of cars there of course, but the numbers using public transport are increasing markedly.
(Aucklanders: Please don’t all come and live here though!)
eredwen
June 12th, 2006 at 11:24 pm
“Being generous with other people’s money is a vice, not a virtue. ”
So I take it you don’t believe in personal bankruptcy either? Time to bring back Debtors’ Prison and the Workhouse?
Bad debts are bad for a reason. Condemning a country to starvation to pay back ill-considered aid schemes seems vastly unfair, when presuambly a risk assessment would have raised this as a possibility at the time.
“The real problem is that unrepresentative (and often repressive) regimes borrow the money, yet the nation as a whole is deemed to have assumed the liability. Personally, after such a regime has been ousted, I’d like to see creditors have to pursue the dictators that they lent their money to, and have no claim on the country itself.”
Heh the same dictators who are routinely bribed to accept these loans they can never repay? Yeah right. It’s all part of the money go round.
“An informed consumer would understand that we are talking about free workers, not slaves”
Tell that to the Pakistani labourers building Dubai- often they are bonded to their employer who they have to initially pay to work. They have no legal rights at all, passports confiscated, live 10 to a room, go unpaid for months etc. Sounds like slavery to me.
Or China- starve to death in the slums, or work for 80 hours a week for 50c an hour, including children.
There is no reason capitalism has to be so exploitative, when all it would require is global agreements on working conditions, spurred by the demand from western consumers for ethically produced products. For example Nike- they were forced to do something about the child labour in their factories.
June 13th, 2006 at 2:42 pm
PEL,
Sorry to misunderstand you.
uk_kiwi,
Your consideration for workers in the third world is admirable, but your solution is not.
Re: Pakistani labourers in Dubai. Doubtless you are correct about their position, but that is in no way representative of what we a talking about. Overwhelmingly we are talking about workers in their own countries who are free to leave at any time.
It really helps no one to falsely depict them as being slaves. How can you possibly contemplate appropriate policies if you insist on grossly misrepresenting the nature of the problem? The problem is poverty, not slavery.
So, given the fact that people choose to work in these factories, what can we conclude about wages and conditions elsewhere in these economies? Why are western-owned factories so offensive to you when they are presumably offering a better deal than all the local alternatives?
Would international labour standards help? Well if they’re such a great idea, why limit them to the western-owned factories which are already the best places to work? If high labour standards are the solution to poverty, why not insist that they are imposed right across the economy?
The mooted imposition of international labour standards is simply a device intended to protect members of wealthy organised western labour groups at the expense of the world’s poor.
The fact is that productivity in these economies is so low overall that a miserable pittance is the best they can pay themselves. Western companies are able to install reasonably productive plants in these low-wage economies and so reap a significant profit. As productivity increases in the economy generally, so upward pressure on wages appears.
Imagine two pathetically poor countries. One allows foreign investment and western “sweatshops.” The other refuses to allow itself to be “exploited.”
As a member of the labour pool, which economy would you rather be part of? And in twenty years, how will the two economies compare?
The sweatshops are the start of a process. If you’re campaigning to stop them you’d better be damn sure of the real-world implications of your actions.
June 15th, 2006 at 6:18 pm
“The fact is that productivity in these economies is so low overall that a miserable pittance is the best they can pay themselves. Western companies are able to install reasonably productive plants in these low-wage economies and so reap a significant profit. As productivity increases in the economy generally, so upward pressure on wages appears.”
No No No.
The fact is that in most, if not all, unexploited unwesternised places the locals were probably living in a well distributed and relatively harmonious society with each other and nature as they had done for eons-until they are conquered, cause societies not at war within themselves don’t tend to do the conquest thing.
In the less “sophisticated” areas in China, this will have been the case also whereeva the regions were not under the rule of warlords or what have u(communist rule etc), who tend to think the concentration of the area’s wealth is always RIGHT. And it don’t change…
June 26th, 2006 at 10:52 am
Catching this one a bit late in the day - still my 2 cents is this:
There is no need for Sylvia Park or similar large-scale shopping malls in NZ. Everything one needs can be found in local shops or via the internet.
Grocery stores, local supermarkets and delivery companies provide my basic grocery needs plus there are local clothing outlets, 2nd hand stores, markets, dairies, specialist food stores, hardware stores, book shops, pharmacies, coffee shops etc all withing walking distance.
If I can’t find what I need locally I can catch a bus to a more distant shopping area. I have no car to take me to an out of town shopping mall and quite frankly no need to go there.
I think the problem is that as part of the great western consumer society we are fooled into believing we NEED more than we actually do. Kiwis in particular seem to treat consumerism as a national past-time. This is not healthy either on a personal or national scale.
My advice would be to buy less, recycle more and be grateful that we have the luxury of being able to shop for more than basic needs.
June 26th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
Well said ecomonkey:
“I think the problem is that as part of the great western consumer society we are fooled into believing we NEED more than we actually do. Kiwis in particular seem to treat consumerism as a national past-time. This is not healthy either on a personal or national scale.”
For the oldies among us, however, the advent of American style shopping is “within living memory”.
I think of two factors that have have a big influence on the way we are:
1. The “opening of our economy” (to make it easier for us to sell things) took away the chance for discussion and discretion about what we should import into the country …
2. The fact that Americans speak English made it very easy for the direct introduction of American advertising, TV programmes, and raison d’etre!
Super Malls are just an extension of this … and in this Kiwis are the followers, and certainly not the leaders, in “treating consumerism as a national pastime” !
So we buy what we WANT NOW rather than what we need. We no longer expect it to last long, and we discard it as soon as it is replaceable with a newer version … with little if any thought about where it came from and where it goes when discarded … and all the implications of this behaviour.
Super Malls are just an extension of this … and Kiwis are the followers, not the leaders in “treating consumerism a national passtime”.
The Green question is … how to combat this?
(How do “overseas exchange, economic growth, free trade, individual responsibility, freedom of choice … and all those words square with “local community”, “peak oil”, “self sufficiency”and “finite planet” etc)
June 26th, 2006 at 5:53 pm
Just spotted this article on BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/5115990.stm
I think you’re right about the American influence eredwen and I’m not sure how to answer that ‘Green question’; however, NZ isn’t the only country in this situation. Economies, large and small, all over this planet are already starting to face up to this problem (some have been doing so for many years).
I believe a global change is needed rather than (as well as?) a country specific one and this would involve a complete change of focus away from the need for financial sufficiency to ethical & sustainable sufficiency instead.
I’m not convinced this will happen in my lifetime, if ever, so am intent on merely trying to live this way (less money focused more ethically & sustainably) and hope that more and more people will do the same.
In the UK there is a major trend moving in this direction and I’m encouraged by the number of individuals, families, companies concentrating on ethical, sustainable and local as well as global community focussed practices and principles.
I know NZ is a much smaller country but given its worldwide image of “clean & green”, would it be so difficult for us to do the same??
June 27th, 2006 at 11:10 am
Big stores vs small stores isn’t just a matter of consumerism… and what in the world makes you think Americans speak English?
At over 12% illiteracy it is questionable that they make sense in any language at all… Bush being a prime example of the problem.
However, my point isn’t humorous… big stores have significant advantages over smaller, big chains over single stores, because economies of scale work to their advantage. They can negotiate the lower prices, they can alter the overhead balances by using captive brands.. all manner of advantage comes with size.
That isn’t to say it is best to have mammoth big-box stores scattered about and the demise of the smaller markets, it is to say that this is one of the areas where the optimum mix will have to be found by the market itself. There are “dead” malls in the back-blocks of the USA. You can find them, with weed-grown parking lots and merchants and investors struggling to survive.
The market doesn’t always work, but in this case I think it will.
respectfully
BJ
September 30th, 2007 at 9:49 am
The Malification movement is a relic of fifties US consumerism, when you were encourged to use you car. NZ has still to catch up with the new attitude that is developing in Europe.
Town Planning in the UK now encourages diversity of business in local areas so that people can access goods and services without being either held to ransom by transportation or have to use a car. Imagine being a pensioner in samll town and unable to shop locally because all the businesses are in the mall?
There is a ’shop local movement in the UK and one in the greater London area which involves local businesses and offer discounts and sweeteners for customers to use them The FoE UK have ’shop local first’ movement.
The supermarkets are handy, but they come with a fatal price-tag -that which starves small communities into submission, and encourages a homegeneity of goods, expectation and service.
We stock them largely with imported goods, so our cash goes out the country then the shareholders often reside overseas, so our cash goes out the back door too.
Roads are wonderfull things, but when they only take you to a limited and unimaginative place, you have to ask why?
September 30th, 2007 at 1:54 pm
Why? Because limited and unimaginative places aren’t limited and unimaginative places to limited and unimaginative people.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I agree. In part.
Bad traffic is always a nuissance. But if I owned my own business, I don’t know what I do to provide a better solution.
Maybe work with local traffic engineers?
August 14th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
You are right about the traffic being dreadful at Large Malls. Getting there is horrendous, finding a parking place is laughable, and the long walk to the entrance is one marathon to many. You can shop under one roof for anything and everything. When you finish shopping, you do another marathon back to your car. Being a grandmother I shop at individual stores where I can park, go in, buy, and then go home. I tell my children and grandchildren when they ask me to go to the Large Malls with them that I’m not a “Large Mall Endurance Shopper”.
August 14th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
The second resurrection of a thread started over 2 years ago. Extraordinary!
October 2nd, 2008 at 7:44 am
Large Malls are on the way out. I’ve noticed that the smaller malls are coming back and the downtown areas, especially smaller towns are now getting into the act of attracting more shoppers. It’s Good Therapy for all to get out and about to shop.